"CIVILISATION begins," William Faulkner once pronounced, "with distillation." He may have felt differently had he considered Georgian London, a major step back for civilisation by any standards. It was here that the city’s fetid backstreets spawned the Gin Craze, causing decades of soul-searching among philanthropists, politicians and magistrates about the wretched lives of the poor. Gin’s reputation as the crack cocaine of its day was cemented with lurid press tales about gin-fuelled degradation and squalor, culminating in William Hogarth’s infamous 1751 engraving "Gin Lane" (pictured).
-The Economist
